‘It takes ten years of hard work to become an overnight success’.

Take any successful business or product today and look at the time they’ve stuck around till they finally achieved success – Facebook, Rovio (Angry Birds was their 52nd attempt) and Twitter are just a few examples.

Here’s what you need to do and a possible solution to this conundrum: pivot. That’s your keyword there, and take note of it. Pivot defines the moment where startups change or die.

Don’t miss out on the good parts in your venture. At least you have a few customers; even if you have one, that’s fantastic. Meet those customers, bring them to your office, get them to use your product in front of you and observe if they’re behaving the way you intended them to. Get feedback from them on what is working for them and what is not.

Collect all the feedback and tweak your product to suit your customer’s demands. Keep tweaking it till it works! It may take you a few years, but you didn’t startup to give up.

So if you ask me what’s worse: giving up too quick or staying too long, I’d say both! You MAY not succeed if you stay long enough and pivot in your startup, but you’d DEFINITELY not succeed if you give up too soon.

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While there’s a lot of information and insight about customer engagement through Facebook, little has been written about generating leads through Facebook. Very few have in fact been successful at it.

Here are six entrepreneurs who talk about what works and the ways startups can leverage third-party apps to generate Facebook leads.

Grow Your Fan Base

“Facebook is a critical platform for businesses as it provides a primary source of web traffic and an organic dialogue with fans who, according to Facebook, spend an average of two times more money with businesses than non-fans. However, News Feed posts barely engage or grow a brand’s fan base, reaching only 16 percent of a business’ fan base per week. Apps can increase fan engagement by encouraging fans to share with friends. There are a number of third-party app companies that provide efficient and cost-effective tools so that businesses can focus resources on their core business. According to Wildfire’s “Earned Media Study,” the most effective campaigns based on rates of sharing are for pick your favorites and quizzes. The lowest were for giveaways and video contests.”

- Karen Moon, Co-founder and CEO, StyleMusee

Timeline Is A Mini Website

“Timeline for Pages has really changed the game for small businesses; Facebook {ages now look and function like miniature websites, thanks to navigation-like buttons below the cover image and full, custom tabs. Free customization tools such as Timeline Image Tool are essential for turning your page from an ugly default to a professional looking mini website!”

- Laura Roeder, Founder, LKR Social Media

Crucial To Business Today

“We’re in a social economy now. Consumers are increasingly going to expect that you have a presence on the platforms they spend time on, and Facebook is where this is most true. Third-party apps can save you time, money, and effort when it comes to capitalizing on the audience you build on Facebook; rather than building your own custom pages or tools, leverage niche-focused thirty-party apps to enhance your Facebook presence. Tools like Bandpage for music agencies or Foodtree for food businesses can get you live, and engaged a lot faster than you might do for yourself, and likely at far less cost. That lets you focus on making great products and talking with your dedicated followers; the most useful way for you and your team to spend your time.”

- Derek Shanahan, Growth Marketing, Playerize

Collect Emails And Engage Fans

“Timeline is an incredible tool. Every company is on Facebook, but Timeline allows a much closer level of engagement. Third-party apps like Napkin Labs are a key resource. Use third party apps to help collect emails. Likes are important, but getting emails is better. A great method: offer deals in order to collect emails, generate buzz, and actually make sales. North Social is great for this. Giveaways are a great way to do this as well, and Wildfire has awesome tools. If your company doesn’t sell something that is conducive to a giveaway, you can also offer a product or service that is sought after by your target demographic. If you offer something irrelevant, you may collect a ton of useless emails!”

- Aaron Schwartz, Founder and CEO, Modify Watches

Doubling Our Leads

“We’ve seen our leads from Facebook double since switching to Timeline, and I think the new layout gives businesses an opportunity to leverage Facebook like never before. We have been using the AWeber for Facebook app. It allows us to collect email addresses which, in my opinion, is one of the most important things to use your Facebook Page for. We offer a free gift for opting into our list, and have a custom button for the app. We also use Strutta, which is an amazing app suite for Timeline that allows you to increase engagement through contests, coupons, and more (disclosure: Strutta sponsors my site). Lastly, we love Vokle because we can do live video Q&As right from our Facebook Page!”

- Natalie MacNeil, Emmy Award Winning Media Entrepreneur, She Takes on the World

Who Needs Third-Party Apps

“In terms of managing and organizing your Facebook Page for your company or brand, I’ve heard great things about Heyo (formerly Lujure), a drag-and-drop interface Facebook Page management app. However, Timeline isn’t that much different from your News Feed, your personal Facebook profile or the stream of updates you see on Twitter. So the same marketing principles still apply. Start by producing and/or sharing valuable content based on the expectations, desires, and demographics of your audience. Encourage the sharing of your updates by your Fans. Then, always have a call-to-action that promotes what you’re selling mixed into the process — either on your blog article, like an email capture form in the side bar, or with your promotion of a targeted landing page on your site.”

- Matthew Ackerson, Founder, Saber Blast

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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There’s news for you. Market research sucks! Big time! Not only does it give you the wrong insight, it will not do any good for your venture. Because, most often, people don’t know what they want. Did you know that you wanted a phone without any buttons/keys before the iPhone was launched? Did you know you wanted a digital music player before the iPod was invented? You had no clue.

Also, when you ask people whether they will use your product or service, they will most often respond in the positive. Because people don’t like to disappoint others. Ask them to put money where their mouth is and you will have an entirely different story.

No amount of market research will help you unless you actually develop a Beta or a prototype or a MVP of your product or service. Something that your focus group can interact with, feel and use. What you need to see is how do they behave when put in contact with your product or service. That will give you cues on whether it works or not. Let the actual customers sample it. Let them give you first hand feedback.

The best market research is when customers use your product and tell you whether it’s ‘Hot or Not’.

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Get a nice office space with a neat little cabin and thinking rooms for product ideation; work on a plan to scale big nationally or globally; recruit teams that will take care of product conceptualization, development, marketing, sales, customer service, etc; allocate money towards media channels for marketing and development of collaterals; hire a research company to help with customer research; and I’m sure there’re a whole lot more important things to spend on to get your business up and running.

These are just fluff and you do not need any of these on day one. Most of them would not be needed for a long time even after launching your product.

When you’ve got a whole lot of money to start playing around with before your product is even developed, entrepreneurs tend to make far more mistakes and end up creating a mediocre product. Take for instance, hiring a market research company. The real market research happens when your customers actually use your product (or a minimum viable one) and give you first hand feedback.

On the other hand, if you have very little money to begin with, you tend to focus on making far fewer mistakes. You’ve got very little room to play with and have to get your product working and accepted right at the beginning. You don’t have the leeway to create a whole lot of crappy product versions or prototypes, you’ve got to get it right with as few versions, possibly in the first two!

You think harder and tend more to innovate on how to sell and market your product; you create guerilla-marketing tactics.

In a nutshell, little money makes you innovate and thus create avenues that get you bigger results for your efforts.

That’s the route to creating successful products so do not fret if you do not have money to start your business. That’s in fact the best way to start a venture so go ahead and figure out how best can you use your available resources to launch your product.

Google, Microsoft, Virgin, Apple, Facebook, and just about every other successful venture did not start with a million dollars in funding. Here’s your cue!

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By now, your audience has already been through several presentations over the course of their career and each presentation they have to sit through becomes more a chore than a love affair.

When you open your presentation by introducing yourself and your company and what you’ve come to talk about, you’ve just tried to nail them like everybody else. And because your audience is so attuned to people nailing them, they couldn’t care less.

What you want to do is to hook them. To woo them. Think approaching a girl at a bar. Would you open by saying I’m Rahul Varshneya and I’m the CEO of Arkenea? She doesn’t care what you do, but would certainly care about how you can make her evening interesting.

Your presentations have to have the same flair. Open with a story to get your audience to feel the same way as you do about what you have to say. How many times have you seen a TED talk that begins with the speaker saying, “Several years back, when I was…” They just hooked the audience to go on a journey with them.

And the next time you present with a big bang opening, don’t forget about the end. Finish by keeping them hooked for until after you leave by sending them on a journey of their own that resonates with your message, not directly with your product or service. Lead with, “So the next time you think about…”, or “The next time you see…”, or “The next time you come across…,” etc. Craft your own lead out.

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Starting, launching and growing a business is not easy, and the best way to be successful is to get advice from those who have been there before. Real entrepreneurs with real experience and real advice.

So for all the entrepreneurs out there making it happen each and every day – this one is for you. This guide from Clarity.fm (click here to download) leaves you inspired, informed, and ready to take on whatever task or project lies ahead.

Here a sample of what’s in store for you in the guide:

“Design is more important than technology in most consumer applications,” Dave McClure, Founding Partner at 500 Startups

“When choosing a startup idea, the ones that scare the crap out of you in their magnitude are the ones you want to take note of,” Andrew Cross, Co-founder of GooseChase, alumni of VeloCity and Startup Chile

“We all make mistakes. When it happens, be honest with yourself (and your team) that you messed up. Correct quickly. Learn from it. Don’t ever repeat. The best startup life lessons I’ve learned are those from my own mistakes,” Jeff Thompson, Founder, UserEvents

“The best thing you can do if you want to become an entrepreneur is just share your ideas with people. Few people can execute on a great idea that you had without you and, contrary to popular belief, ideas are rarely stolen. Instead, they are collaborated on, fleshed out, and brought to life,” Ryan Paugh, Co-founder, Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)

“Don’t halfass a dozen ideas. Pick one and kick ass instead!” Devesh Dwivedi, Partner, Idea2Inception

And most often that excitement turns into a disappointment or leaves you in a flux because they tell you things like, “Are you sure you want to take this risk?”, “You’ve got responsibility of a family, how will you manage that,” “You have a safe and secure job, why do you want to risk by venturing out on your own?” The list is endless and you know it.

These objections typically come from people who have lived their life in the average. Doing the best they can do with what they have. Nothing wrong with that at all. But that is not the life you dream of. That’s not your calling.

You want to break free from the routine. You want to make a significant difference to a large number of lives. You want to follow your dreams. You want to change the world!

So what stops you? Other people who chose to lead their lives the way they do? That was their decision. This should be yours. This is your life and you’re the boss.

Think of it this way, in the end, we’re all going to turn into ashes and dust. You’ve been given this opportunity to lead this one life your way. Do you want to live YOUR life or the life that others chose FOR you? Whose life do YOU want to live?

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Times have changed and you need to evolve too. It’s no longer about transactional selling, but more about relationships. And a lot about networking. Now, a lot of people get squeamish about networking picturing the typical overambitious, schmoozer kind of people. The good news is, networking if far from that.

You would be surprised to learn (by the end of this article), how easy it is to get better at networking and in turn drive more sales for your business.

So what is networking about? It is about building a genuine relationship by seeing the world from the other person’s perspective and by thinking about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.

Your first move should always be to help. Start with a friendly gesture and mean it.

There are three networking groups, which are part of your natural network, but hugely ignored in the way you interact with them. Your network is bigger than you think and harnessing the power of this network is far simpler than you can imagine. So lets explore these three networking opportunities.

Work on your allies

An ally would be someone that you consult with on a regular basis. List down about five to ten such people that you interact with, who you turn to for advice and who provide you with key insights in business. These allies will most often be influential people, in their own right.

Keep your radar on to spot situations where you can proactively promote their brand and stand up for them when they’re in trouble. And when you do this unselfishly, they would do the same for you.

Let them know that you’re there, be in touch with them so you come to know of such situations. Think of one who needs an urgent presentation done and you offer to help even though you’ve got enough on your plate. But this small gesture will go a long way when you realize that this person will think of you first when the opportunity comes to recommend a business, product or a professional to a prospective client.

Work on your network

Your allies may not be more than five to ten. But you’d have a huge network of acquaintances that you would know through your career (ex-colleagues), college or schoolmates, people you meet at conferences or just people you’ve met throughout your life who you found interesting. These are people that you are friendly with but not in constant or regular touch. You may be touching base with them once in a few months.

Because these people are outside your natural circle and would be a far diverse group of professionals as compared to your inner circle, they can bring more opportunities for you. All you need to do is to touch base with them every once in a while without an agenda, but subtly letting them know what you do.

Email them something you found interesting and relevant to them, meet them once in a while for a coffee and catch-up and in conversation, let them know what you do.

At Arkenea, we’ve driven a lot of business through our acquaintances that are far and wide and spread out across the globe. By being in touch with them just once in a while has brought us at least 10-20% of our business. When these people get the opportunity to recommend a developer to their network, they think of us.

Work on your extended network

This is where Linkedin steps in. Lets say, you have 100 connections, and assume each of your connections have at least 50 connections of their own. And each of those friends of friends has 75 connections in their network. You don’t need to be good at math to learn that you’ve got a database of 375,000 (100x50x75) people you can reach out to.

So how do you tap into this huge pool of people you have just discovered? Get to know them through introductions. Get introduced to them through your immediate network of connections and give them a reason to extend your introduction. Don’t take them for granted.

When you’re connecting with friends of friends, do not make the mistake of sending out generic mailers or messages that most people typically do. These usually go unnoticed and will just waste your time.

Instead, before you send out the introduction request, research for 15 minutes about the person and write a personalized message that will get their attention. Simply use Google to find out more about the person and their interests.

Just five successful introductions each month can go a long way in taking your business forward.

Here’s a step-by-step reckoner that will get you started on identifying the right networking groups and how to connect with them.

Month One

• Look back in the last six months and list down five to ten people you have interacted the most. Assess whether that interaction has had any positive influence on you. If not, you need to seek such people.
• To find such people, think for a moment that if you’re in deep trouble, who are those five to ten people that you will get in touch with for help.
• Get in touch with these people and fix a casual meeting. The idea is to get to know their challenges better and how you can help them.
• Look for instances through their network or through your conversations with them on areas that you can help and simply go ahead and do it.

Month Two

• Be in constant touch with your immediate group of these five to ten people so you always know where you can make a difference.
• List down all of your direct connections, people you’ve known over the years and find out their email addresses.
• Offer something of value to them. This could just be forwarding a job posting or an interesting article.

Month Three

• Identify what challenges you are currently facing in your business that you need help with.
• List down your target segment for doing business with.
• Seek out professionals from friends of friends on Linkedin who you feel can help you find solutions to your problems or who could be potential business partners.
• Spend at least 15 minutes on each identified person researching on their life and interests and pick on areas where you have common interests or you can connect with.
• Write to them with a customized message bringing the common interest at the forefront to grab their attention.

This is it. Don’t rush by trying to do it all in the first month itself. Building relationships takes time and you need to be careful about what you say to whom. So spend the first three months building it up and then follow up with the connections through the rest of the year.

A word of caution: do not plug promotional content of messaging to any of these contacts or that will take you back to the transaction selling of the yesteryears with the potential of it falling on deaf ears.

At the end of the year, you will see remarkable difference in the contribution these people would have made in your business. Just as it worked for me at Arkenea.

Originally published on Under30CEO.

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Sometimes, you just don’t move ahead or don’t know how to when faced with a challenge or a problem. So much so, that you stand there and let things be the way they are.

And this is a disaster if you’re starting up or growing your company.

Your biggest challenge as a toddler was to learn how to walk, isn’t it? And how did you overcome it? Simply by taking a step at a time! You learnt to walk a step at a time, falling sometimes but mostly you’d get up by yourself and give a go at it again till you succeeded.

You did the same when you learnt how to ride a bike. So what happened along the way? The challenges don’t get bigger with time. To a toddler, walking on ones own feet was the biggest challenge at that time. So why do we give up now and why do we end up procrastinating?

Challenges always have a solution. To every problem there’s a solution.

The main culprit here is fear. It is the fear associated with the challenge or a problem that stops people from trying. And it stops them from thinking creatively. Well, for some, it simply stops them from thinking. Period!

As a child, we’re fearless. We take more risks. And we get rewarded equally, like being able to walk and run without support! The best way to disregard this fear and get solution to your problem is in your childhood.

Take a step at a time. Move little by little if that helps, but always keep moving forward. You will see that things start to work out. Don’t take my word for it. Believe in your own self.

Steve Jobs too believed that in the end, things always do work out, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

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If every entrepreneur were to go by those ten rules, they’d never succeed because these are too generic. This is a collective resource of things that work for most entrepreneurs or businesses.

If you want to make your venture successful, you really need to focus on just one or two of those aspects. And that too isn’t something that you can pick out on at the beginning. Depending on your situation, you’d have to pick one.

Think about a startup with its product recently launched in the market and doesn’t get enough traction. What it really needs to do to succeed is to get the customer feedback quick and pivot.

Just that one pivot could change the game for the startup. Not the nine other ways to succeed at business.

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